


This, then, was home

by eldritcher



Series: A Four Chord Carousel [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: An epilogue to Catullus 16, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Four Chord Carousel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 03:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16905429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: Harry finds himself at home.





	This, then, was home

**Author's Note:**

> Out-take from Catullus 16 of domestic fluff.

Mucking about in the dirty trough was hardly Harry's idea of an aphrodisiac. Nevertheless, he could not deny the effect on his lover. Voldemort stood on the knoll aside the sty, watching Harry clean the trough and then wash the piglets.

Harry had found his calling, of sorts. He had wound up with a coop and a sty, and spent his days scurrying around managing the hens and the pigs. Voldemort had little notion of agrarian, bucolic tasks and had left the estate to rot after their housekeeper's death, when Harry had been comatose in their bed. Harry knew he should be kinder; Voldemort had barely kept himself sane during those two years. Harry had been around and recovered for a few months and Voldemort still tended to look at him as if he would fade into the evening mists if he was not beheld a moment. 

So while Voldemort busied himself with his fears, Harry was left to be practical about their living. Food, he had decided, unable to prevent his deep sorrow whenever he noticed how robes hung off Voldemort's thin body. So Harry had made his way down to the village square in Verzenay and come back with pigs and hens. Voldemort had not complained. Harry doubted that Voldemort would complain about anything for the rest of their lives as long as Harry was within reach and full of life.

There they were, with Harry mucking about in the sty while the piglets oinked and squealed. Voldemort watched him in fascination and the thin robes he wore did little to hide the physical manifestations of his interest.

"Pigs?" Harry teased, panting and winded from his chores.

"Pigs indeed," Voldemort acknowledged in jest, his gaze unwavering. Harry wiped his dirty hands on his grubby overalls and looked up at him. His lover cut a picture against the spring blue skies, against the profusion of yellow gorse that hedged them in, against the errant dandelions that flowered at his feet. 

"Which one do you want for dinner?"

Voldemort scowled at him. Harry grinned. For all of Voldemort's sins, he preferred to be blissfully unaware of how meat came from livestock to his dinner table. Harry had plenty of ammunition to tease him about his city ways, in return for all the times Voldemort carried on so about Harry's suburban morals when it came to debauchery and drugs. 

"Named them, didn't you?" Harry persisted.

It had been in a fit of hilarity that he had prepared chicken broth last week, after Voldemort had walked in on him plucking the bird. Voldemort had been startled by the sight, horrified by the process and aroused by Harry's ease with it. For all that he liked dominating Harry in their bed, he was hardly averse to succumbing to a firm, adept hand. Later, in the privacy and ease of their bed, Voldemort had muttered that he had names for the poultry, because he was used to seeing them on his walks about the estate and could pick most of them individually by sight. They had eaten Peggy, it seemed. It was something that only a city-bred man would think of doing. Harry had laughed and then gracefully given in to Voldemort's irked, riled up, passionate lovemaking afterwards. 

Harry loved the man, and he loved the little quirks that he discovered everyday. Here was a puzzle that was all his, an endless variety of questions to investigate and reactions to learn. 

"We need a new housekeeper," Voldemort murmured, sweeping his robes with his characteristic economy of movement and seating himself to watch Harry toil. 

Hermione might have called the arrangement unfair, but even she had been slowly coming around to see there was an equitable distribution of labour. Harry did what he wanted to, and Voldemort did the same, and between them, they managed to make it work. 

Housekeeper. Yes. For all that Harry enjoyed cooking and watching Voldemort eat his preparations, he did not have the time to do so everyday. He preferred to spend his time outside, hunting with his kestrel, taking care of the poultry and livestock, foraging for mushrooms and truffles. Hermione commented that Harry had become a lord of the country manor stereotype, plump and ruddy, rusticated. Snape called him a bumbling peasant. Neither of them saw the particular advantages of his lifestyle, of how he could easily ravished in glen and glade by Voldemort who seemed to have quite the obsession with Harry's new pursuits and what they had wrought on his body. 

"Do you want me to ask Lucius?" Voldemort enquired, striving to help, for all that he knew little of household management.

"Bellatrix wants to be our new housekeeper," Harry remarked, finishing up his cleaning. He filled the water trough and the pigs came to drink, oinking their way there. He picked the smallest one and cuddled it to his dirty chest. "Greet your dinner, won't you?"

"No, and no," Voldemort replied flatly. "Even I cook better than Bella and all I can do is burn cheese on toast." 

He watched Harry keenly as he fetched his slaughtering knife. Harry had offered to teach him but Voldemort said he preferred murder to butchery. Harry suppressed a smile at the flinch Voldemort could not hide as warm blood splashed over.

The first time, Harry and their old housekeeper had been alarmed when Voldemort easily spoke a curse of green to ready their dinner. Harry had drawn the line at that, frightened at the thought of curse magic tainting their food, and had learned from Clara how to butcher. Since then, after Clara's death, it had been Harry's mantle.

"Come and help me truss him up onto the hook," Harry asked. 

Voldemort sighed but complied. He disliked getting blood on himself and little wonder why he preferred standing far away to curse. Even when he accompanied Harry on a hunt, he preferred to let the kestrel mark and bring down a partridge instead of chasing rabbits or or deer or wild boars of which they had plenty in the woods. Nevertheless, Harry admired how he overcame his aversion where there was genuine necessity. Together, they strung up the piglet and Voldemort began carefully pouring hot water to remove the hair. He was very good at it, his meticulousness and patience far exceeded Harry's. Harry picked up his knife again to remove the guts of the animal. 

"Harry!" 

It was Hermione. Voldemort suppressed a smile at her impromptu visit. It was only the most recent of many. She conducted them without warning so that she could catch them unawares. Harry had given her an open invitation and he supposed it was too late to retract it. She was in equal parts propelled by curiosity as she was by concern for his welfare.

She came upon them and shrieked at the slaughter in progress.

"Why, hello to you too, Hermione," Voldemort greeted her, not taking his eyes off the carcass as he removed hair and offal. 

"We shall have pork chops tonight. Staying for dinner?" Harry asked.

She glared at him.

He had the feeling she would soon become an animal rights activist and a vegetarian if she came upon his activities one time too many.

"It is fine," Voldemort offered. "It could be worse. He could have been dressing game."

She pressed her lips tightly and glared at Harry. Hermione had a difficult relationship with Voldemort. They managed to hold civil conversation most of the time, but she found it difficult to resign her condemnation. And unlike Harry, who comfortably lapsed into denial, Voldemort could be quite persistent in drawing out and dissecting her unease with little rancour. 

"I came to see if you had any luck appointing a new housekeeper," she said demurely.

"Not yet," Harry admitted, standing back as Voldemort picked up the cleaver. Voldemort glanced across and Harry nodded assent. He was tired and would do a poor job at that right then. Voldemort must have noticed, for it was unlike him to offer assistance with this part of the proceedings. "I have just told him that it shall be Bellatrix unless we find someone soon."

Harry walked over to the pump and stood underneath, pumping water and cleaning himself off thoroughly. He pulled the tarp that hung on a clothesline to spare his modesty. He had little use for it when it was just the two of them but Hermione would be scandalized and Voldemort disliked anyone else looking at Harry. Indeed, right then, Voldemort cleared his throat and handed over a set of robes. Hermione left after taking tea with them, saying she had to get home and cook dinner. Her eyes were full of longing when she expressed her regrets that she could not stay for Harry's cooking. She was of the opinion that he outdid Molly, though she had the sense to be quiet on the matter before the Weasley matriarch. 

They had pork chops that night. 

“So?”

Voldemort looked up at him, halfway through topping their glasses with wine Harry had selected for them during his last foray to the market.

“Tell me,” Harry pressed, spearing a chop with his cutlery, admiring how well-seasoned it was. He had become quite the cook, if he said so himself. “What was the name of our dinner?”

“Benedict.”

“Your names are turning fancier,” Harry said, unable to suppress a hearty laugh. Benedict, the blessing. 

“He was born on the day you woke,” Voldemort said. There was a thread of disbelief in his voice, even then, after eight months of waking to Harry's touch.

“To Benedict,” Harry said quietly, regretting waking that ever-present mourning which hollowed them out. “He was a good piglet.”

Voldemort laughed then, despite himself. Harry had become better at that, at tackling grief with humour, at battering down fate with farce. 

“I shall have to plead for amnesty for my favourite conversationalists in the sty.” 

“Oh, how would you do that?”

“I have insider information that you are susceptible to certain means of persuasion I excel at.”

“Excel at?” Harry laughed, charmed, in love, glad to see parting's loss lifted off Voldemort's face. 

“Well, it isn't as if you have anyone to compare me to. I cherish my monopoly of buggery.”

Harry laughed and put his cutlery away. He cleared the table while Voldemort went about closing the windows and doors to their terrace, every night's familiar ritual.

This was home, then, where they puttered about in domesticity and love, knocked about a tad by griefs and losses, and still content in their belonging of two.

“Open up,” Voldemort muttered, when he joined Harry in bed, pressing his fingers to Harry's mouth. Harry opened wide, and coughed up in surprise when olive oil filled his mouth. The taste was strong and the smell overwhelming. Harry brought his fingers to his face and found it greasy with oil that had splashed outside his mouth when he had coughed. 

“Don"t swallow it. I shall have need of it, in a moment or two.” 

So Harry held it there, open-mouthed, and his lust was a sharp and discordant ruinsome beast when Voldemort dipped a finger to oil it, and stuck it promptly into Harry's arse.

“What a lovely receptacle you make, for many purposes!” Voldemort exclaimed, teasing in his eyes as he watched Harry struggle to keep his mouth open, to overcome his reflex to swallow. 

Voldemort made him hold the oil in his mouth, even when he fucked deep into Harry, and it was infuriating and intoxicating to be there, still as he could be so as not to spill the oil, complying, obeying, unable to arch his back and thrust his hips up to meet Voldemort halfway. He felt objectified and it wrought his arousal darker, in delicious, shameful ways, and he came harder than he had in a long while. 

“As I have told you often, olive oil is quite the aphrodisiac.” 

Harry let him have that night. It had been good. It had been wonderful. And when Voldemort kissed him, their mouths tasting of olive oil, there was only softness and joy. Harry snuggled into their nest of limbs and blankets, and decided to plot later.

He would repay creatively the next time he caught Voldemort outside watching him forage and hunt. 

Snare him, truss him up, and fuck him silly. A cuckoo burst out of their clock, chiming for midnight's hour. 

“I can feel you scheming.”

“Sleep well, my darling.” 

There, that threw Voldemort off, as it had done every time before. He quieted and shifted closer, and Harry was left to pleasant silence, and he gladly used it to hold the man closer as he fell asleep.

This, then, was home. 

——

**Author's Note:**

> (If you go to look up Catullus, please note that it has explicit content)
> 
> **Request: Please don't repost/rearchive/distribute any of my fics that are not on Ao3. Existing translations are fine. Thank you!**


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